The grounding problem for stance voluntarism

Abstract

Abstract The scientific realism debate has long been characterized as a deadlock, and many have sought to escape its persistent stalemate through a pragmatic turn. Stance voluntarism, developed most fully by Anjan Chakravartty, exemplifies this turn. Rather than adjudicating between realism and anti-realism, it diagnoses the gridlock as rooted in differing epistemic stances: clusters of attitudes, commitments, and policies that are not themselves truth-apt. The stance voluntarist argues that both the realist and empiricist stances are rationally permissible. This permissibility claim rests on a rationality norm requiring merely that stances be logically and pragmatically coherent. This paper raises the grounding problem for stance voluntarism: what justifies this thin rationality norm, and from what perspective can it be coherently defended? I argue that the rationality norm underwriting equal permissibility cannot itself be justified from within any first-order stance. Crucially, I show that this problem survives Elder’s response to Baumann’s irrationality objection, since Elder’s level-distinction clarifies where the norm is asserted without explaining what justifies it. I then argue that the most viable grounding strategy commits stance voluntarism to epistemic instrumentalism. Epistemic instrumentalism is a controversial and widely contested thesis that the voluntarist assumes rather than defends. This reveals that stance voluntarism is far less neutral than advertised. I conclude by mapping two tractable paths forward for the realism debate, if the conciliatory promise of stance voluntarism cannot be vindicated.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Synthese, 2026 · DOI ↗